Four graded components, every page has the full rubric.
Assignments
Nothing in this course is a term paper. Each assignment is a professional deliverable with a real audience: a case analysis a practitioner could act on, a short video your community partner can publish, a strategy pitch delivered to that partner’s leadership, and a running inventory of real problems you have seen firsthand.
| Component | Weight | Who | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethics Case Analysis | 20% | Individual | Week 7 |
| Digital Storytelling Project | 25% | Individual or pair | Week 12, screened Week 14 |
| Technology Strategy Pitch | 30% | Group of 4 to 5 | Pitch Week 14, final plan finals week |
| Participation | 25% | Individual | All semester |
Ethics Case Analysis. You put one deployed technology on the bench, open it up, and trace its harm or its success to a specific human decision. You pick the case (a harm case or a success case) and the format (a teardown, a consult memo, or board testimony), then record a 5-minute walkthrough a non-technical stakeholder could follow. Launches Week 3, due Week 7.
Digital Storytelling Project. You make a 3-to-5-minute video your community partner can actually publish: a program explainer, an impact story, a recruitment piece, a service how-to, or an event recap, the purpose agreed with the partner at the intake conversation, completed by Week 8. Before the pitch you collect strong examples in your chosen category and submit what you learned from them. Consent, accessibility, and honest representation are graded; the class screens the finished pieces in Week 14, and consenting pieces go to the partners. The video is separate from the pitch; the two share a partner and are graded independently.
Technology Strategy Pitch. Groups of 4 to 5 are matched with a real community partner in Week 5, run a needs assessment, and pitch a technology decision to the partner’s leadership in Week 14. The deliverables are a deck, a two-page executive summary, and an honest budget. Recommending against adoption, argued well, scores full marks.
Participation. Four pieces: showing up and arguing both sides (8%), a Problem Inventory of real service problems logged across the semester (10%), guest-speaker responses that feed the live Q&A (4%), and posts to the class Design Walls (3%).
Weekly checkpoints
Every big deliverable is introduced early and checkpointed in class before it is due. Bold rows are graded submissions; the rest are working checkpoints with class time attached.
| Week | Ethics Case (20%) | Digital Story (25%) | Strategy Pitch (30%) | Participation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Template released | Partner matches announced | ||
| 5 | Pick your case | Problem Inventory, two entries in | ||
| 6 | Launched; lab is the supervised rehearsal | Partner introduction memo due | ||
| 7 | Due at start of class | |||
| 8 | Purpose agreed at partner intake | Funder grant teardown run in lab; partner intake conversation completed | Problem Inventory check, two entries expected, feedback only | |
| 9 | Launched; interview protocol drafted and red-teamed in lab | |||
| 10 | Exemplar scan shared; video brief agreed with partner; storyboard started | Fieldwork: partner interviews (through Week 12); needs assessment memo due | ||
| 11 | Rough cut (homework before class); captions corrected and peer bug-bounty in lab; right-of-reply viewing scheduled | |||
| 12 | Due; partner review of the cut | Design-from-the-margins lab feeds the accessibility and ethics sections | ||
| 13 | Final pre-pitch consult: three pressure-tests; plan outline and metrics due; one logged revision | |||
| 14 | Screened; consenting pieces delivered to partners | Live pitch to the partner’s leadership; feedback packet collected. Final written plan due via Canvas during finals week |
AI policy
You may use AI on every assignment, and you must do two things every time: disclose what tool you used and for what, and verify every AI-surfaced claim against a primary source before it enters your work. A confident, wrong, unchecked “fact” costs more points than not using AI at all.
You help write this course policy. In Week 5 the class co-drafts and signs the AI Disclosure Charter, which becomes the disclosure form attached to every submission.